Federation class TMP-era dreadnought

Description
Pizza the Hutt gives us another nice converstion here. The Federation class dreadnought is one of those ships that people either think, "why the hell do we need that?" or they love it and consider it an essential part of Starfleet. It originally appeared for the first time in the Star Fleet Technical Manual, published in the 1970s, as a fan design. It, along with the Saladin, Hermes, and Ptolemy designs, became part of canon (sort of) when they were used as screen images in both the first two motion pictures. The Federation class (although differently named-- I think it was the Star League class) was also featured in a novel based in the original series era. Naturally, it only seems right that the upgraded Constitution as seen in the Motion Picture give rise to a more TMP-themed version of the Federation class dreadnought, although other non-canon ships (notably the Ulysses class, Akula class, Akyazi class and Ark Royal class) give this design some competition in the "best non-canon TMP ship".

Anyway. That's the story behind the ship. The model of the ship is quite nice, although you should be advised that the texture set name used (fca_##) is already in use among models widely used in A2 to represent the Constitution class and its kitbash descendents. These textures ARE NOT COMPATIBLE, and thus this set will cause your existing Connies and the like to look a little distorted. This is only true of older TMP-era Constitution class models, and their like. But since I keep everything and look for these sorts of things, as a public service, I thought I would mention the potential for conflict here.

Furthermore, the model itself, while perfectly accurate, looks a little strange from a distance. There's no lightmaps, and the nacelles and external saucer look much brighter than the stardrive. This looks like one of those simple errors easily correctable by a 2.0 release, but this is one model I'd love to see all shiny and lightmapped properly.

Worth a look.

:cool: